3 Questions a Super Sales Rep Will Want to Ask about Social Selling

3 Questions a Super Sales Rep Will Want to Ask about Social Selling

Let’s assume marketing is providing you leads, and you already have your own group of clients, new or inherited. But what if you could expand your potential for business by being smart and utilizing social networks to build a pipeline of your own potential new clients? Using social selling techniques (aka building and nurturing authentic personal relationships online) will help you stay ahead of the curve, help you meet quota and show your bosses you not only can close business, you can cultivate it.

1. If I start using social networks, won’t that just mean I’m taking on more responsibility and work?

If you think by being on social networks just adds to your work load and list of responsibilities, you’re wrong. We all know buyers aren’t answering phones and that they’re doing 70% of the buying process online before they even want to talk to you. Instead of attempting to nurture your buyer on the phone and via email, you will move that process online for a number of your potential clients.

2. But I’m the closer, not the lead-generator, right?

Many businesses are vertical but for many reasons, many are now becoming more flat. Perhaps you used to depend on marketing to get leads. In a sense it was a top down approach. Now you want and need marketing helping you, but you can and should, also be your own direct representative of your business to the world of potential buyers. Each sales rep rep still needs content from the marketing department but you increasingly will have a responsibility to not just wait for leads from marketing but hunt on your own. Buyers don’t want to deal with a faceless corporation, they want a personal relationship and if you’re out there in the forest, so to speak, you can be their guide.

Social selling is an extension of your sound and true selling techniques. Let’s say you’re at a conference and you meet a potential buyer. You exchange cards. You go back to your office and send them an email with your offerings and you try to set up a call to get to the next step. But, they’re not ready. Before social, you’d call them or email them every once in a while to stay in touch.

Now, you also have the opportunity to connect with them socially and have an online presence that illustrates your experience and expertise on a personal level. You can demonstrate, not your company’s expertise, so much as the capability and value you can provide in advising about your company’s expertise. In this way, you have the potential for being singular, informed and worth the further investment of time.

You can also be online to keep close tabs on what key information your potential buyer may share online that can indicate what they want, (and therefore how you can help them) who they’re talking to, who their influencers are and who they know that you may also know, in order to further the sales process.

Final notes: An entrepreneurial mindset is an increasingly desirable quality in sales representatives, in part because technology allows them to have a voice of their own to advance the goals of the business. Be an entrepreneur, think for yourself, be your own brand and use social selling to maintain your super sales rep status.

Have you already determined that the best sales reps use social selling techniques?